


Ashes

by teamanic



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Brutality, Mentions of syringes, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Self-Harm, Starvation, The descriptions are very vague but I am tagging just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23176285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamanic/pseuds/teamanic
Summary: The nightmare never ends.It’s a feverish black thing that expands and contracts like the belly of a horrid creature, and clad in only weathered flesh and bones, he festers and rots in it all.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> A short fic that explores and highlights some of Lio's time in the Foresight experimental facilities. 
> 
> Please be aware of the tags! I may be missing some of them. I tried to keep the descriptions as vague as possible but note that there can be some triggering content even if it's not explicit.
> 
> Edit: This takes place before Lio became part of Mad Burnish

The nightmare never ends.

It’s a feverish black thing that expands and contracts like the belly of a horrid creature, and clad in only weathered flesh and bones, he festers and rots in it all.

His thin breaths keep him alive in the cycle. It’s barely anything except for a cold trickling sound that echoes deep in his lungs. 

He inhales through his nose.

Releases a shaky breath through parched lips. 

The drugs that drip through his veins doesn’t let him do anymore than that. It's one that clogs him up with a thick poison made only to subdue rather than kill.

He curls pitifully into a corner, fighting to stave away the creeping cold that gnaws into his bones. 

He keeps this precious mantra alive.

Inhale.

Exhale.

The hands and faces that appear in foggy lenses become one and the same, a creature that chitters indistinct numbers and words with gloved hands prodding and probing in too many places under his skin. 

No-one bothers to clean the drying crust of tears on his cheeks once the ordeal is done. Not even when they drag him back into his cell, limp and barely responsive to their rough ministrations as he drowns in the heavy swirl of drugs and sedatives. 

For the rest of the hours before his next operation, he spends his time thinking.

Whether he’s the same inside each time they pry him open. 

He tears at his skin with blunt fingernails, determined to scrape away the vile touch of white latex gloves with every draw of stark bright blood. 

His skin becomes remade each time, a fresh slate ready to be carved over and over as the flames within him mend his stinging wounds and pride.

Lio wants to laugh. It comes out like a bitter dry cough instead. 

He doesn’t even have his own permission to take apart his flesh. 

His dreams always start off like a blank canvas, water colored memories splashing across its face with a clear sky and green meadows. 

_Mother_.

There’s a delighted twinkle of her eyes as he nocks an arrow and hits the target dead-centre successfully for the first time. Lio is small here, but his heart soars and he feels taller then everything else in the glow of her smile. 

He beams under her sing-song praise, and he laughs under the rays of it all. He laughs, and he cries with delight, and smiles and-

There are no such things as dreams. 

Mother’s smile bleeds red into something sinister. Morphs and twists and churns until-

Something else is standing in her place, an indistinct silhouette with a scalpel in one hand. He’s bound and strapped to a cold hard surface, forced to watch as its point descends down to prick a trail of blood just above his naval- 

Lio often wakes in gasps and shivers, heaving and choking on watery tears. 

This becomes routine. A cycle that always ends with him drowning a breath away from the surface. 

“We can't escape. We get punished like this if we try.” Whispers a child who resembles more a skeleton than flesh and skin. Lio’s stomach twists horribly into dark curdling knots when he sees ugly black stitches in place of the boy’s eyelids.

“Like this...” Lio echoes numbly. 

The boy does not say anything when Lio kneels down and takes him into his arms. He’s so small and frail, the knobs of his spine takes up more space then his own flesh and _worse_ are the hot tears that leak through what’s left of the child’s eyes. 

It’s not _fair_. 

He manages to reel in the choked sobs pushing up his throat. 

_How could-_

_Why-_

He only remembers shaking as he cradles the back of the boy’s head with a trembling hand, whispering _sorrys_ over and over.

Meals prepared with real food were a luxury. If he was lucky enough and if his caretakers were in a good mood, he could save the pieces of stale crusty bread for the less fortunate sharing his cell. 

Even when the leftovers are for him, he never accepts them. Would rather be subject to his diet of watered down soup or the sludge his taste buds have grown accustomed to. It's a thick nauseating mixture of blended artificial nutrients and vitamins. Lio thinks even animals are treated better than this.

But Lio is determined. Despite the icy glob of substance that slides down his throat, he doesn’t throw up. Not even when his stomach shudders and he wretches on nothing. 

Lio fights. 

A phoenix that rises and falls in its own ashes. 

He gives trouble to his captors whenever he can. He kicks and thrashes and twists against his restraints as they drag him through sterilised corridors. His goal is simple: become their favourite plaything. 

That way they can take their anger and frustration out on him, only him. It’s far better him than anyone else. 

He can take their hits and gut wrenching kicks to his stomach even when it pushes stinging bile into his throat. 

They gag his mouth every time they handle him now. 

An order from the higher ups after the third finger he’s bitten off. 

He kills someone for the first time. 

He stands over the crumpled body, hands stained and dripping as the glass of a shattered syringe digs and tears into the palm of his hand. 

He doesn’t need a fire to purge monsters. The syringe needle left in the body’s neck does the job.

Lio becomes a subject of fear.

He’s passed around institutions and doesn’t stay long in any of them. 

They’re wary of the cunning potential in his mind, tip toeing around him like scared rabbits. 

_As they should be_.

He’s put under three times the recommended amount of sedatives in hopes of drowning that flare of fight in his core. 

But Lio protects the candle of fire within the harrowing blizzard.

Even after the fourth injection.

And the sixth. 

The ninth. 

Eleventh.

Lio screams in protest, running his voice raw until it feels it might bleed. 

A guard wrestles the child to the ground far more brutally than they need to. Lio thrashes against another pinning him against the floor of the cell. He chokes out bloodied spit as an elbow digs painfully deep into his back, cracking bones and ribs.

The boy kicks and screams as he’s thrown to the ground for the second time, head cracking into it. Lio manages to get one foot under him before a gloved hand clamps down around his neck, crushes him further into the ground. His vision is slanted, waning in and out of consciousness as blurred out silhouettes wrestle and grapple with a tinier body. 

_He’s only a child. Please. Please-_

_“A waste of resources.”_

_“Scheduled to be disposed off today.”_

There’s the sound of another hard crack. The boy falls limp in front of Lio-

-crumpling. The sound of glass shattering as his vision tints red, red, _red_. 

Something-

Something _burning_.

And then. Then-

_“Activate the cooling! Its temperature is rising into the containment breach zone-”_

_“It’s overriding the cooling system, we can’t stop it- it’s going to-”_

-A horrid scream splits him in half. 

Molten fire boils in place of veins and blood. It lances up his throat until he’s spilling flames past his lips, and he doesn’t stop burning. Incinerating. Igniting into a million blazing tempests. 

Not until he’s become the maw of the inferno, a shroud of jagged flames of all flaming teeth. He becomes the beating heart, embodies the deadly chorus of indistinguishable wails, both anguish and delight. 

Not enough.

Not _satisfied_ until he’s burned all the corpses down to their very skeletons. He burns and burns it all until there’s not even ash to remember them by. 

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again. 

The nightmare never ends. 

It’s a feverish black thing that expands and contracts like the belly of a horrid creature, and clad in only weathered flesh and bones, he festers and rots in it all.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing a remotely dark fic so if you have any opinions and thoughts, please feel free to express them in the comments. I don't bite :) 
> 
> I may do a follow-up with this fic. An additional extra short chapter with how Lio handles his trauma with Galo helping him heal because I want hurt/comfort.


End file.
